Clergy is typically used in reference to Christian churches; however, clerics (members of the clergy) are referred to in different ways for different denominations. A Catholic priest is the equivalent of a Protestant minister. A pastor is any Christian cleric in charge of a congregation or parish.

Under labor law, the clergy can be required to uphold the beliefs of the religion they have chosen.

She was looking clean as clergy.

Robert Newton Peck -- A Day No Pigs Would Die

Mark and Jim met the clergy at Gilford village.

Margaret Craven -- I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Maycomb’s regular pastors ate free for a week also, and it was hinted in disrespectful quarters that the local clergy deliberately led their churches into holding separate services, thereby gaining two more weeks’ honoraria.

Harper Lee -- Go Set a Watchman

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If there had been a huge crowd yesterday, today’s hearing had brought more people, including several clergy members and older people of color I’d never seen before.

Bryan Stevenson -- Just Mercy

Drunk on Mourning and just recently a thief, I guessed the less contact I had with the clergy the better off I’d be.

Patrick Rothfuss -- The Name of the Wind

The minister he was assisting, he wrote, had turned the parish calling over to him: it was a wealthy congregation and large contributors expected frequent and unhurried visits from the clergy.

Corrie Ten Boom -- The Hiding Place

So unless circumstances of death or critical illness require you to travel to Paris this afternoon, and unless you can supply information establishing the critical emergency such as an affidavit with attending physician, clergy, or funeral director —

Donna Tartt -- The Goldfinch

And from then on they launched a series of drive-by shootings and bombings, usually directed at local officials and pro-government clergy.

Marcus Luttrell -- Lone Survivor

I’d inform if he were my own son: and it’s felony without benefit of clergy!’

Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights

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I just don’t know what’s happening to the clergy these days.

Joseph Heller -- Catch-22

It was an old Anglican private school, established for the daughters of English clergy, property owners, and overseers.

Malcolm Gladwell -- Outliers

I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

Someone in the clergy.

Dan Brown -- Angels & Demons

O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors.

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

They ran the three churches to which they belonged, the clergy, the choirs and the parishioners.

Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind

The Holy See worked hard to retain a veil of mystery, even for its highest clergy.

Dan Brown -- The Da Vinci Code

And he has also left other directions which the clergy of the village say should not and must not be obeyed because they savour of paganism.

Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote

M. the Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des Pres ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope’s Nuncio officiated.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Everyone stood up respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

Some were asked to speak on the relevance of the professional clergy to the religious vocation.

Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point

He was feeling a new heresy coming over him, possibly as a result of the spirits, and it had something to do with the celibacy of the clergy.

T. H. White -- The Once and Future King

You haven’t mentioned the clergy, either.

Jostein Gaarder -- Sophie’s World

From many descriptions of larceny the law expressly took away the benefit of clergy: to steal a horse, or a HAWK, or woollen cloth from the weaver, was a hanging matter.

Langdon saw no Masonic ring on the dean’s finger, and yet he knew many Masons, especially those within the clergy, chose not to advertise their affiliation.

Dan Brown -- The Lost Symbol

The church is not the stone building nor even the clergy and their dogmas.

James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The king sat under a canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals.

Mark Twain -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

These were searched and sought out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy and the people.

Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver’s Travels

Padre de Jesus and Brother Daniel had been down in the capital throughout July conferring with other clergy.

Julia Alvarez -- In the Time of the Butterflies

I knew the clergy’s taste, the dandy gent’s taste; I knew the town’s taste, the country’s taste.

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

Not only were they eminently respectable, these were figures who held real influence in British life: politicians, diplomats, military men, clergy.

Kazuo Ishiguro -- The Remains of the Day

Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart of the church.

Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina

"Ay, that’s true," said Mr. Tulliver, almost convinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.

George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss

Yet so loose were the ideas of the times respecting the conduct of the clergy, whether secular or regular, that the Prior Aymer maintained a fair character in the neighbourhood of his abbey.

Sir Walter Scott -- Ivanhoe

…Satan for doing justice; interdicts whole kingdoms, and shuts up the churches for want of paying a few ecclesiastical dues, and so puts a stop to religion for want of their money; that the court of Inquisition burnt two men for speaking dishonourably of the Blessed Virgin; and the missionaries of China tolerated the worshipping the devil by their new converts: that Italy was the theatre, where religion was the grand opera: and that the Popish clergy were no other than stage players_.

Daniel Defoe -- Robinson Crusoe

…I have the highest opinion in the world in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom—provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained.

Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice

Simon is a little surprised: surely it is the duty of the clergy to encourage pious eyewash.

Margaret Atwood -- Alias Grace

While I liv’d in Boston most of my hours of leisure for conversation were spent with him, and he continu’d a sober as well as an industrious lad; was much respected for his learning by several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemed to promise making a good figure in life.

Benjamin Franklin -- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

…a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais.

Charles Dickens -- A Tale of Two Cities

It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt.

Jane Austen -- Mansfield Park

He had a sort of contempt for the lower clergy, and right up to the last he was explaining his rank.

Graham Greene -- The Power and the Glory

Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work.

Gustave Flaubert -- Madame Bovary

Apart from her being what she is, of course, a luxury for a fogy like me, it will set me right in the eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven me for letting her go.

Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure

The reason, he quickly came to understand, involved service: The funeral directors were not merely men selling a commodity; other than clergy, they were the ones most intimately in touch with the townspeople in their times of sorrow and need.

James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers

They are so big that there’s room for all kinds, and it turns out that Lady Cressida is the moral one—married a clergy-man and does missionary work in the East End.

Edith Wharton -- The House of Mirth

Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-father, he suddenly announced that the baby "ought not to be christened at all."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov

[*] This is the second person of low condition whom we have recorded in this history to have sprung from the clergy.

Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones

Of his own body he was ill, and gave The clergy ill example.

William Shakespeare -- Henry VIII

Durbeyfield began, and thereupon related in detail to his wife a discussion which had arisen at the inn about the clergy, originated by the fact of his daughter having married into a clerical family.